Second Masters Degree in English: useless or worthy?

[heliogabalus]

What do area of English lit do you want to focus on, and why did you have a bad experience during your MA? Are you sure that you will not have a similar experience again?

[GatsbyGirl100]

15 hours ago, mikeck said:

How did you perform in them? Were they in your potential area of study? Also, are those classes you can get letters from?

I think you shouldn't go for a second master's degree if your goal is to get a PhD. Instead, I think you should work on your letters of recommendation, SOP, writing sample, potential research interests, and GRE. Those things are all really important. The SOP and writing sample are crucial elements, and many people can improve their GRE scores with enough preparation. You have a lot of time to work on all of these things.

However, from your original post, I kinda get the vibe that you really want to get another master's degree. If that is the case, then just make sure that it is fully funded so that you are at least not paying for a similar degree.

 

I did really well in those classes. You're right, I need to focus more on my application. I don't want another master's degree. The goal is my PhD for research. 

I have a busy summer to look forward to! Perhaps I can visit my former grad school and beg, beg, beg my lit professors for a letter. 

[GatsbyGirl100]

7 hours ago, heliogabalus said:

What do area of English lit do you want to focus on, and why did you have a bad experience during your MA? Are you sure that you will not have a similar experience again?

Chaucer and medieval lit. I'm from Boston so New York was kind of a big change for me. I didn't like the atmosphere. I remember getting my apartment broken into several times. It wasn't necessarily the school, but it certainly was stressful. Professors are kind of pretentious there, too. ?

[knp]

Can you give us a longer version of what happened? I'm thinking the 200-300 word version, like we don't know anything else about you, because we don't. Did you just not connect with your professors, and escaped as more or less one face in the class, not somebody with whom they had an individual connection? Or did you have big problems with them? Because this:

47 minutes ago, GatsbyGirl100 said:

Perhaps I can visit my former grad school and beg, beg, beg my lit professors for a letter. 

struck me as a big red flag. That...really shouldn't be how this goes. If your problem is that they don't know or remember you very well, you fix that by corresponding with them more as a fellow professional and future peer, over multiple interactions (whether in person or by phone/Skype/email), not as a supplicant begging for favors. Now, if something really did go very wrong that you think you would really need to beg for their support, why don't you tell us about it? We can't advise without more of a sense of what's going on.

Edit: also useful would be to know, if most of your master's classes weren't in English or literature, what field they were in.

Edited March 4, 2016 by knp

[GatsbyGirl100]

6 minutes ago, knp said:

Can you give us a longer version of what happened? I'm thinking the 200-300 word version, like we don't know anything else about you, because we don't. Did you just not connect with your professors, and escaped as more or less one face in the class, not somebody with whom they had an individual connection? Or did you have big problems with them? Because this:

struck me as a big red flag. That...really shouldn't be how this goes. If your problem is that they don't know or remember you very well, you fix that by corresponding with them more as a fellow professional and future peer, over multiple interactions (whether in person or by phone/Skype/email), not as a supplicant begging for favors. Now, if something really did go very wrong that you think you would really need to beg for their support, why don't you tell us about it? We can't advise without more of a sense of what's going on.

Edit: also useful would be to know, if most of your master's classes weren't in English or literature, what field they were in.

What exactly do you mean by what happened? I went to graduate school for a master's in humanities and social sciences. I didn't like the school as much as I had wanted to. The environment wasn't friendly and I hated New York. I had a 4.0 GPA and I took courses in literature, women's studies, creative writing, and comparative literature. 

I guess I did a miserable job in trying to be humorous. It was a joke to "beg, beg, beg professors for a letter." Sometimes my humor can be misconstrued over the internet. 

 

[CarolineNC]

If I were you, person who sounds very much like youngcharlie, I'd just take some graduate classes elsewhere, boost my reputation, and get some letters from some new professors. 

[knp]

I'm not sure what not loving a school has to do with not being able to get letters from your professors there. One of my stronger letters came from a professor whose class made me miserable, whom I didn't like that much, and who I'm pretty sure didn't like me a whole lot either. But although we sparred a lot at the beginning, we developed a lot of professional respect, so I got a wonderful letter from him.  It is possible to get a great letter from a professor whose class you didn't love, so long as you approach doing so as, again, a professional and a future peer.

So I agree that you should go take graduate classes elsewhere to form some new relationships...but if you want to salvage at least one letter from your master's program (getting one is probably wise so it doesn't look weird for you to have gone there), I strongly suggest you take a look at the archives of The Professor Is In's blog, with a special emphasis on this column. (Perhaps also some general workplace blogs? I can't recommend any in particular, though.) Academia's professional norms are not necessarily obvious to observers, but TPII does a good job making clear what they are, which is very helpful for both your immediate professionalization concerns and for longer-term ones. Good luck!

[GatsbyGirl100]

3 hours ago, CarolineNC said:

If I were you, person who sounds very much like youngcharlie, I'd just take some graduate classes elsewhere, boost my reputation, and get some letters from some new professors. 

 

Are people on this website normally so passive-aggressive? Who is this Young Charlie that you are all so obsessed with? Did he have a gold member or something?

Edited March 4, 2016 by GatsbyGirl100

[GatsbyGirl100]

1 hour ago, knp said:

I'm not sure what not loving a school has to do with not being able to get letters from your professors there. One of my stronger letters came from a professor whose class made me miserable, whom I didn't like that much, and who I'm pretty sure didn't like me a whole lot either. But although we sparred a lot at the beginning, we developed a lot of professional respect, so I got a wonderful letter from him.  It is possible to get a great letter from a professor whose class you didn't love, so long as you approach doing so as, again, a professional and a future peer.

So I agree that you should go take graduate classes elsewhere to form some new relationships...but if you want to salvage at least one letter from your master's program (getting one is probably wise so it doesn't look weird for you to have gone there), I strongly suggest you take a look at the archives of The Professor Is In's blog, with a special emphasis on this column. (Perhaps also some general workplace blogs? I can't recommend any in particular, though.) Academia's professional norms are not necessarily obvious to observers, but TPII does a good job making clear what they are, which is very helpful for both your immediate professionalization concerns and for longer-term ones. Good luck!

Great resources. Thank you.

[ExponentialDecay]

On second thought, the prospect of there being more than one person who went to the same school and screwed up in pretty much the same way as YoungCharlie is even more entertaining.

 

[goldfinch1880]

1 hour ago, ExponentialDecay said:

On second thought, the prospect of there being more than one person who went to the same school and screwed up in pretty much the same way as YoungCharlie is even more entertaining.

 

also I think it's really funny that anyone would come to a forum full of people who literally want to make/are making their livelihood analyzing words, and so generally have unusually good eyes for details, and expect no one to notice. You maybe could get away with this in some other field of PhDs, but probably not here.

 

[goldfinch1880]

9 hours ago, knp said:

Can you give us a longer version of what happened? I'm thinking the 200-300 word version, like we don't know anything else about you, because we don't. Did you just not connect with your professors, and escaped as more or less one face in the class, not somebody with whom they had an individual connection? Or did you have big problems with them? Because this:

  10 hours ago, GatsbyGirl100 said:

Perhaps I can visit my former grad school and beg, beg, beg my lit professors for a letter. 

struck me as a big red flag. That...really shouldn't be how this goes. If your problem is that they don't know or remember you very well, you fix that by corresponding with them more as a fellow professional and future peer, over multiple interactions (whether in person or by phone/Skype/email), not as a supplicant begging for favors. Now, if something really did go very wrong that you think you would really need to beg for their support, why don't you tell us about it? We can't advise without more of a sense of what's going on.

Edit: also useful would be to know, if most of your master's classes weren't in English or literature, what field they were in.

If you look at the original YoungCharlie masterpost, there's the same phrase about begging:

 

" I had to beg two of my professors for solid recommendation letters, and they didn't even submit them on time. "

[GatsbyGirl100]

Yeah, because I'm sure there are only a handful of grad students in the metropolitan city of New York. It's such a small city! 

I went to CUNY, by the way. Master's in humanities. Get your facts straight.

Edited March 4, 2016 by GatsbyGirl100

[GatsbyGirl100]

What's even funnier is you all claiming to be experts and you spend so much time on a forum bullying and trying to make people feel bad. It's kind of sad. What, don't you have friends or a life? Pathetic.

I think I'm done here. Didn't realize this website was full of shallow pricks. Thanks to all that did help. For the others, thanks for the laughs. I pity you. 

Edited March 4, 2016 by GatsbyGirl100

[ExponentialDecay]

Yeah, academia is full of pricks. We may be a bunch of trolls, but don't think that the chilling side-eye academics in real-life will give you for paying real money to go to a cash-cow program in one of the most expensive cities in the world and getting nothing out of it because you didn't like the professors or some shit is gonna be any easier to bear. I'm sorry you hated it, but if that is the case, you either quit while you're ahead or you grit your teeth and make it work. What do you mean, you took 2 classes in your field over the entire course of a graduate degree? What do you mean, you haven't made friends with the faculty? Do you even conference? This isn't undergrad, where you get free toileteries during finals time and one of your dormmates is a paid and trained member of staff whose job is to make sure you get along with your roommate. You're supposed to already have skills like googling and being civil with your superiors. 

Good god, I know people who have done the MAPH and similar. The only goals are to get a better GPA than undergrad and to get 3 letters from fancy scholars. 

[goldfinch1880]

32 minutes ago, GatsbyGirl100 said:

What's even funnier is you all claiming to be experts and you spend so much time on a forum bullying and trying to make people feel bad. It's kind of sad. What, don't you have friends or a life? Pathetic.

I think I'm done here. Didn't realize this website was full of shallow pricks. Thanks to all that did help. For the others, thanks for the laughs. I pity you. 

and there it is!

[also NYU has an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies through the Draper Program in Humanities and Social Thought, but CUNY doesn't so...]

[GatsbyGirl100]

11 minutes ago, goldfinch1880 said:

and there it is!

[also NYU has an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies through the Draper Program in Humanities and Social Thought, but CUNY doesn't so...]

Umm, I'm pretty sure they do. 

[ExponentialDecay]

46 minutes ago, goldfinch1880 said:

and there it is!

[also NYU has an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies through the Draper Program in Humanities and Social Thought, but CUNY doesn't so...]

CUNY has an MA in liberal studies. http://www.gc.cuny.edu/Page-Elements/Academics-Research-Centers-Initiatives/Masters-Programs/Liberal-Studies

[goldfinch1880]

4 minutes ago, ExponentialDecay said:

CUNY has an MA in liberal studies. http://www.gc.cuny.edu/Page-Elements/Academics-Research-Centers-Initiatives/Masters-Programs/Liberal-Studies

Yeah but she said her MA was in "Humanities and Social Sciences" and NYU's program is the only one of the two with those foci.

Edited March 4, 2016 by goldfinch1880

[ExponentialDecay]

idk. she may have meant that she took classes in the humanities and social sciences, which she could've done in any interdisciplinary program. it's hard to judge without being given the name of the MA.

[fuzzylogician]

Guys, if I may, I can't stop you from discussing whatever you want, but this is one of the more pointless conversations I've read in a while. Even if it is the same person, it's a new username without any of the history, and that should mean something. Why don't you give her the benefit of the doubt instead of coming up with elaborate conspiracy theories? 

[goldfinch1880]

1 hour ago, fuzzylogician said:

Guys, if I may, I can't stop you from discussing whatever you want, but this is one of the more pointless conversations I've read in a while. Even if it is the same person, it's a new username without any of the history, and that should mean something. Why don't you give her the benefit of the doubt instead of coming up with elaborate conspiracy theories? 

It's way more fun to waste time with conspiracy theories. (= my life motto.)

(Also last year she caused a ton of upheaval with her whole "thing" and I think people were attempting to head it off this year before others unwittingly get too invested.)

[knp]

Just saying, but I'm totally clear on the history here. Even if it is the same person, they still need advice. This person's situation is still that they got a 4.0 in their master's (very good) without, somehow, being able to get or or even develop the foundation for getting one recommendation (a bizarre level of ungood).  The original post that it might have been the same person may have been useful for some people (I got it anyway, but I assume it helped some others) but continuing to insist that she's the same person is just weird and annoying. What if you really are confusing some poor innocent poster who's never been on here before? However we feel about wasting our own time, that's not somebody whose time we should be proud of wasting.

[goldfinch1880]

[ExponentialDecay]

1 hour ago, knp said:

Just saying, but I'm totally clear on the history here. Even if it is the same person, they still need advice. This person's situation is still that they got a 4.0 in their master's (very good) without, somehow, being able to get or or even develop the foundation for getting one recommendation (a bizarre level of ungood).  The original post that it might have been the same person may have been useful for some people (I got it anyway, but I assume it helped some others) but continuing to insist that she's the same person is just weird and annoying. What if you really are confusing some poor innocent poster who's never been on here before? However we feel about wasting our own time, that's not somebody whose time we should be proud of wasting.

I understand your point, and I agree, and I am in awe of the patience and good character of anybody who can make such an earnest effort. However, she's not the only one who keeps coming back to this forum asking for the same advice on the same goddamned issue, then refusing to take any of it, getting really shouty, leaving in a huff - and then the cycle begins again. Is it wrong to mock these people? As much as it's wrong to mock anyone, I suppose. I'm not pretending to be doing this for the common good. But after a certain point, what else do they expect?

Edited March 4, 2016 by ExponentialDecay